Tree Sweaters to Cover the Junk... Of Your Trunk

That's right FIPS'ters -- it's that frigidly snowy mildly cool time of year again when we need to bundle up wear a heavy sweater (or maybe a hoodie) just to go outside. And in these cold, dark times we cannot forgot the trees. Yes, this being the Magic Kingdom of Park Slope, even our trees have hand-knit sweaters (well, just our trees on 16th between 7th and 8th Avenues). And although this very phenomena was covered by Erica last year following a reader's tip, not much was known about the genesis of these arboreal knits... until now.

Thanks to the journalistic savvy of the Brooklyn Daily, we now know that these adorable tree sweaters are the work of 58 year-old street artist Laurie Russell. According to the Daily, Russell says:

She’ll leave the grandma-goes-graffiti art up until March, through the coldest months, when leafless trees are nature’s version of naked.

Russell 'splained that the project started as a joke back in 2008 when she messed up a sweater that was originally knit for a human. She briefly toyed with the idea of making sweaters for pooches but decided trees needed some warm lovin' too. Since then she has knit one sweater a year in blue, orange and pink. 

Recognizing that "there’s a subculture of knitters who are slightly crazy," Russell said, "it makes the dullest, coldest months seem warmer." I say sing on sister. Hell, let's cover all the blocks in tree sweaters and make Laurie Russell the  Christo & Jeanne-Claude of Park Slope.  Come on... crazier shit has happened in this hood.